Collins made the original remark after being seemingly dropped from her new album

Adele has responded to remarks made by Phil Collins last year in which he described her as a “slippery little fish”.

Collins had previously been expected to feature on Adele’s new album, ’25’, but eventually didn’t make the final cut.

Collins explained to Q: “She got hold of me and asked if I would write with her. She gave me a piece of music to finish and at first I didn’t know if I’d failed the audition as I didn’t hear back from her.”

“She said, ‘No, no, I’m moving house and the baby’s taking up a lot of my time, I’m not actually doing anything at the moment.'”

Perceiving this as himself being dropped from the album, Collins added: “She’s a slippery little fish is Adele”.

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Now, however, Adele has denied that she snubbed Collins, instead claiming that she simply hadn’t started her album properly yet at the time of their collaboration.

“I met up with him and he was so nice. He’s such a genius,” Adele told Rolling Stone recently.

“But I met up with him in London super-early, like well before I was starting the record. And I had this song in mind and I can’t remember if I gave him a copy of the song or if I gave him a chorus or something, and then I just chickened out of everything. I went, ‘Oh, I’m not ready.’ And he called me a slippery fish!”

“I think he interpreted it that I decided I didn’t want to work with him, but actually I decided I didn’t want to write a record, period, at that point. But yeah, there’s no bad blood there, or certainly not on my half.”

Adele eventually released her album ’25’ in November and has since broken the Official UK Album Chart record for the fastest million-selling album ever. ’25’ went straight to Number One on November 27 with sales of 800,000 in its first week.